LOS ANGELES – Today, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California welcomes Victor Leung as its new chief legal and advocacy officer. In this role Leung leads the affiliate's advocacy department, which comprises 60 attorneys, policy advocates, organizers, and support staff across offices in Los Angeles, the Inland Region, Orange County, and Kern County.
“The ACLU SoCal started 100 years ago with brave, concerned artists and social workers,” said Leung. “It has been an honor to carry forward their legacy for the past 14 years, and I am humbled to lead our integrated advocacy work, centered on working with impacted communities to ensure liberty and equity for all.”
Leung joined the ACLU SoCal as an attorney in 2009, focusing primarily on juvenile justice and student rights issues and most recently serving as director of education equity and deputy litigation director.
Victor has litigated landmark cases including Mark S. v. California, which challenges Pittsburg Unified School District’s mistreatment of disabled students, English learners, and Black students; Sigma Beta Xi v. Riverside, which challenged a program that criminalized youth by placing children who have not committed crimes on probation; Community Coalition v. Los Angeles Unified School District, which ensured that LAUSD provides the proper amount of funding and services to high-need students under the state's Local Control Funding Formula; and Cruz v. California, which challenged policies that deprived students attending under-resourced schools of learning time.
Victor has also led policy and legislative campaigns to increase resources for high-need students, ensure charter school accountability, and eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline. For example, he helped develop and lead the Students Not Suspects coalition, which ran a campaign to eliminate random metal detectors in the L.A. Unified School District, and he recently supported a legislative coalition to pass SB 274, which eliminated willful defiance discipline for all K-12 students.
Previously, Victor worked in private practice as a litigation associate at Latham & Watkins LLP. He graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. in media studies and from New York University School of Law.
Victor was named one of California Lawyer Magazine’s Attorneys of the Year in 2018 and one of Daily Journal’s Top 40 Attorneys Under 40 in 2022. He is currently a lecturer in law at UCLA School of Law.